lady of ladies
by Acey Dearest
Summary: Power is simple. Those who have it keep it forever, if they only have the will to. The phoenix never burns up at all. Sophomoric ramblings of sophomoric individuals, preseries. Sumireko/Touga.


"lady of ladies"

by Acey Dearest

There's a party—there's always a party at home, the same empty ritual to smile through. Nanami haranguing the cooks and complaining about the champagne flutes; their parents are seen but not heard in some painfully stiff exercise in formality. It's easy enough to sneak away now, find a girl and an alcove and kill a little time making each other ordinary again. Strip the designer dresses and spoil the fantasy. It's a waste, but it will do until summer vacation ends. It always has before.

The Chairman's called a week before, reassuring, his voice like the wind rustling through silken drapes. This is the year. This is the year he'll be president of the student council. The year of revolution. Touga savors the thought in small, pleased moments, until he remembers Ruka, there in the hospital bed. Ruka with the Bride in the arena, collapsing in her arms, as if anything had ever held him up but dreams.

But Ruka never recognized the real game. His mistake, his folly, but still something coils itself inside Touga's throat, no matter how casually he tries to dismiss it, something as cold and hard as the signet ring around his finger.

The violins have started up in their void of a rhythm. The musicians look like inkblots, the same faces plastered over and over. The only half-reality seems to be the crimson swirl of a girl's dress as she spins to the music without a partner.

He's heard of her, but what he's heard can't be right. The heiress to the Hanabusa Financial Clique is a quadriplegic—but Sumireko's dancing.

Sumireko's dancing.

He takes her to bed.

It's an easy task. A few idle minutes at the punch bowl. Three dances, one after the other. Sumireko isn't fooled for a moment, and better still, she's admirably old-fashioned. She lets him lead and he's almost impressed by how she yields to every touch, how easily she presses herself down against the mattress. She's a little younger than him, but the carelessness of her motions gives her away. He's not her first. Touga prefers it that way.

Afterwards, she gives in to his prattle with a feylike, amused smile that strikes him as coldly familiar, somehow. He asks the old, practiced questions: all anyone wants to hear about is themselves, and so he gives her as many opportunities to speak as possible, opportunities she mostly ignores. He appreciates that, too, the lack of pretense; she'll answer his questions, but she won't be caught up in what he can offer her. Occasionally she reaches over, letting her fingers smooth down his hair as he speaks, appeasing and patronizing, as if she's stroking a cat, and that eases half the worry he has over the look on her face.

"What do you do for fun, Sumireko?"

"I like going to the firing range." She leans in, resting her head against his shoulder. Even after sex, Sumeriko's scent is still clean and sterile, as if it's a doll and not a girl he's slept with. As if he hasn't left a trace behind, nothing to mar her with.

"You're licensed?"

"Of course." Sumireko pauses. "And you have your kendo."

He doesn't like how she says it. Oh, there's never anything but pleasantness in her tone, the coy pleasantness of as good a breeding as the bourgeoisie can ever offer, but he has the feeling she's laughing at him inside. _You have your kendo_ , as if it's the pastime of a boy. And maybe it is.

"I've done some fencing on the side."

Sumireko makes a small hum of what might have been approval on any other girl's lips. "That's romantic, isn't it?"

"You don't think too highly of it?"

"It's not that. I just think there are better ways to—obtain satisfaction."

"Satisfaction," he repeats, and his hand roams down her side, traces the jut of her hip before sloping lower, between her thighs in slow, teasing strokes. Languid. "Like this?"

Her laugh's a discordant jingle, metal on metal. Sumireko catches his wrist in one dainty, oddly warm hand. He thinks at first it's a signal to stop, but then as she arches forward, he realizes she's only guiding the movement of his hand.

"Not like this." She pauses. "Fencing is dueling for sport, isn't it? Just like my practice at the firing range."

His fingers seem to freeze. He looks at her for a moment, sidelong, but Sumireko's expression, sphinxlike, offers him nothing. No sign that her money's bought her the knowledge that no one outside Ohtori's student council is entitled to. No sign that the Chairman's extended his invitation past the school boundaries. No signet ring. Her hips shove down as she fucks herself against the dampening pads of his fingers. The only other tell is she slight, spreading flush on her face.

He's wrong to be afraid. He has to be.

"What do you mean?"

"Ah, don't you see? We've civilized ourselves. We're past the queens and knights. We're past challenging each other, and we're past honor, too." She exhales, and his fingers find the strength to move and stroke again, slip and curl almost casually between her folds as she continues. "Consider it. Three hundred years ago, in Europe, a gentleman would place death before dishonor."

"Only a rich gentleman," he tries to joke, but it falls flat. And still she smiles, face slightly flushed from exertion, a look in her eyes that wasn't there before, when he took her on the bed. A look as if she's laying claim. Her hips rock up against his fingers, twisting, wriggling, his fingers only the instrument she's using to get off.

"Are there any others? But now, the… idea that a man could put his life on the line for the sake of an insult—that's laughable now. Foolhardy. And all we have left are our foils and our air rifles to remind us that we've turned it all into a game."

It seems like an eternity before he finds his voice again.

"Nostalgia's a bitter pill to swallow, isn't it."

"Yes," she breathes out, body jerking, and he doesn't relax himself until long after she comes, until long after she's left, all soft words and a few steps around the bedroom. One call to her chauffeur, and then she's gone.

He asks the Chairman. The Chairman assures him Sumireko knows nothing. Sumireko is a relic, the Chairman says, the product of a bygone era. An error of time, perhaps, a stopwatch counting backwards.

(but not a princess)

(not a princess)

There are no plans to bring her to Ohtori, no applications in the mail, no letters with Ends of the World's seal. Nothing.

But he could see her dueling. He could see her in the arena. Because a girl like her would want more than a corporation. Hasn't lost sight of what real power is—she just doesn't think it's available on Earth, that it's the relic that the Chairman dismisses her as. Unobtainable.

A girl like her _wants_ what he wants.

He keeps seeing Sumireko between idle dates and idler parties. Splayed on his bedsheets, she looks like Alice after the tea party's finished and the dream's over. There's a strange assurance in her eyes, an eerie kind of confidence that takes him aback.

After awhile he comes to recognize the scars where flesh ends and her prosthetics begin, like seams on a rag doll. The damages don't bother him, but he can't help but assess them—Sumireko's prosthetic arms start at the shoulder, and her prosthetic legs start about three inches below her hips. There's scarring on her back as well, the sharp, even lines of an operation, though from what, he's not sure and she never tells him. It's all real skin there.

It makes a good contrast, he thinks. His own limbs are entirely unspoiled, unmarked. Strong and healthy, with lean muscle where she has only wire and titanium. Manmade imitations. Touga doesn't think it detracts.

They never talk of real things, of businesses and corporations. He knows that she's planned on attending an exclusive academy—Myojo, although from what he's gathered, the application date's long passed. She knows he's a rising junior at Ohtori. But none of that ever gets mentioned. Like anything mundane would spoil what little they have.

Sumireko's given to philosophy and plays. She likes _Hamlet_ , and says once, after Touga admits he never learned to swim, that he would make a fine Ophelia—a would-be princess, in what he's afraid is only half a joke. When he asks if she'd be Hamlet, she shakes her head.

"Hamlet's inactive."

"But Hamlet's a prince."

"I'd rather be queen."

"Why?"

"Princes are all potential, but queens are strong. And to be strong is to never depend on anyone. I want that." She pauses. "What do you want, Touga?"

A revolution is on his lips, but he says instead—

"Power."

"You're such a man," Sumireko coos, in a way that makes it sound more like a sneer. "Power is simple. Those who have it keep it forever, if they only have the will to. The phoenix never burns up at all. Old money..." she says, trailing a finger down his chest, "that's the only thing they can't touch."

"We're the nouveau riche, you and I."

"And that's why it's silly, to wish for power."

"What else is there?"

"Castles in the sky, maybe."

Sumireko laughs quietly. Her hand slips down to trace the jut of his hip—they're not cold, her hands, but they're hard and heavy. The prosthetics offer her plenty of dexterity where it counts, but her hands can't pull a bow along a violin's strings, can't press the keys of a piano. Sometimes even now she can't tell exactly when she's placed too much pressure on an object, not until it's crushed between her fingers.

She never tells him that, but he's deciphered it from all that she doesn't do. Sumireko attends events; Sumireko dances, shoots, bakes. But Sumireko avoids anything that requires an absolutely delicate touch.

He wonders sometimes if that's the real reason Ohtori's been denied her. She doesn't fit the fable. There's nothing mystical about the surgeries and fake limbs that have kept her alive and moving. She's not a noble cripple in a hospital bed. Sumireko's vibrant, insistently so. The flash of a neon light when Ohtori is tame, soft pastels.

"Maybe."

The weeks pass. Vacation's almost through. The Chairman's called, giving him his long-known list of nominations for the student council. Touga calls up Saionji to congratulate him sincerely on gaining the vice presidency. Juri gives him a ring, too, asking about budgeting. Miki asks about how to best add his council experience to his resume.

It's not until a week before school begins again that he calls up Sumireko. He's surprised at his own insistence, surprised at his own defiance. The Chairman's told him already that she's not in the running. That she's not so much as an applicant. He should let it all alone. Instead his cell phone's heavy in his hand as he dials her number.

"I'll have to leave soon."

"We both will." He can almost see Sunireko's beatific expression, and it shouldn't make him shiver. "I have a few business meetings to take care of before I'll be accepted at Myojo."

"I thought you might like to transfer to Ohtori instead. You'd be around people that think like you do."

"Ohtori's no place for me, Touga."

"But-"

"The only destinies are the ones we create for ourselves."

finis


End file.
